Chapter 15: The Dirt Road!

 Chapter 15: The Dirt Road!

The start of British Columbia Rte 37, known as the Stewart-Cassiar Highway. The first ten miles were beautiful, brand-new blacktop!  

June 28, Saturday: 55 miles (4394)

I got a real treat while I was writing this morning; a family of grouse passed right by my tent, apparently completely unaware of my presence. The mother sat nearby, clucking softly, while the 4 chicks walked around picking bugs off the plants around my tent. 

In New Hazelton, I caught up with the 5 bikers from Missoula that I had met in Glacier and again in Jasper. It was good to spend a little time with them - I feel better about sharing the same route now. They showed some respect for the distance I've already come, which they didn't much do in our previous meetings. One of them said "He's already gone farther than our whole trip will be!" They were impressed with my modifications to the bike, (bike-stand, extra spokes, tied-together shift cable) and the fact that it's only a 5-speed. Perhaps they feel good enough about their own trip now that it doesn't bother them to see someone doing an even longer one. I sure know that struggle.

Some locals told us a bit about the road ahead, the bears, and the wolverines (born mad and die mad!) Then the Missoula 5 headed for a campground, and I went to Kitwanga, the last town for 250 miles, unless you count Stewart, which is 40 miles down a side road. I bought the biggest load of food ever; 23 pounds, and put 4 pounds of water in my collapsible container. 

The bike handles differently when it is so unbelievably heavy, kind of neat in a way... it feels stately... acceleration is so slow. But boy is it a grunt on the hills!

The sign I'd been waiting for... and dreading!

 

The bitter end of the pavement! 7:30 P.M.

The first section of dirt was actually wonderful: hard-packed, smooth, and no dust! Then it abruptly changed to the other extreme: bumpy, lots of rocks, dusty, and of course just then a string of trucks and campers went by. It was bad for several miles due to construction, and was not great even after that.

It's kind of the Wild West here in terms of camping: none of the land seems to be privately owned, or if it is, no one cares where you camp, so it's common to see an RV or people car-camping at any random pullout. I was hoping to camp near other people, and I saw folks here and there, but none looked like they wanted company, so at 9:00 I just camped up over a bank in a construction area... not a prize location. I decided I was not going to even try to hang 25 pounds of food, so I just have to hope the bears don't find me.

June 29 1980, Sunday 63 miles (4457)

"Covered a good distance, but suffered heavy casualties. I got an impact flat in the back tire (sometimes called a "snakebite flat," when the tire gets pinched between a rock and the rim, resulting in two holes in the tube, as opposed to a single puncture caused by a sharp object.) I patched that, and thinking it might have been caused by insufficient pressure, I pumped both tires up rock hard.

 

After just 30 miles of dirt road, the rear rack mount broke again. I fashioned a fix similar to what I did in Minnesota, but hopefully a bit more durable, since there won't be a welding shop ten miles down the road this time!

In the process, I stabbed my awl under a fingernail, and gave myself a blood blister on another finger with my pliers, for good measure! While I was stopped, I cut pieces of my foam sleeping pad and taped them onto my handlebars for extra shock absorption, because my hands are taking a terrible beating. 

The traffic was heavier today; maybe 50 vehicles an hour, each making a massive dust cloud, so I was a constant casualty... it got so I could feel the grit between my teeth, and when I took a drink, I could feel the dirt washing off the inside of my mouth. My beard feels like extra-extra coarse steel wool - a heavy-duty brillo pad. (I just realized that it didn't rain yesterday or today. Of course not - that would only keep down the dust!)  

 The worst casualty though, was the front tire. My 14 dollar 1-1/8" Schwinn Super Record tire sure crapped out. I'm not sure if it was too much pressure, or the sharp gravel, or what, but a lot of the cords broke, so the tire was distorted to the point where it would have blown out soon. Luckily I stopped early and noticed it, or I would have lost a tube too. I played musical tires, putting the new 1-1/4" Sekai on the back, and moving the 1-1/4" Schwinn rear tire to the front. I only have one good spare now, and that's a 1-1/8". I guess I'll have to make the 80-mile round trip detour to Stewart and hope I can get a tire or two there.

It's nice to have my psych back. I got up when I woke up, instead of lying there for a while like I have been. It felt good to have some challenges - to have my ingenuity tested with the rack mount, and my riding skills tested by the dirt road. Having the tire destroyed like that makes me realize that this is no picnic - this is a serious undertaking. To use a climbing metaphor, this is a long runout on a 5-10 pitch with little protection. 

June 30, Monday: 71 miles (4528)

To continue the metaphor, "Somebody pulled out the fixed piton just as I was about to clip in: the bridge to Stewart burned last night, so I can't get another tire even if there is a store there that has one, and I can't get more food, so I'll have to make Iskut or Dease Lake on what I have. I was able to buy a loaf of "air bread" at the Meziadin Jct Cafe, for $1.75. While I was there, I treated myself to cherry pie a la mode and a glass of iced tea, using some of the "frivolous money" that John gave me.

The Bear Glacier is on the road that goes to Stewart, and it was only when I got to the glacier that I learned about the bridge having burned. I'm glad I got to see the glacier anyway, though it was an extra thirty-two miles of dirt road.

 

I'm amused to realize that when I took this picture, I was less than 15 miles from Alaska, as the crow flies, but it would be a month and a half and 2000 miles of dirt road before I would actually set foot in the state!

The glacier was impressive, but I'm finding that I'm just as captivated by small things and simple beauty - the pond where I stopped to eat this evening - smooth as glass, with lily pads, some kind of diving bird, and a stillness and quiet that made the noise of my tires crunching through the gravel seem like an irreverent roar.

I got a kick out of the signs today: "Extreme Dust Next (infinite) km"

But it was no joke when a big truck went by at 50 or 60 miles an hour. I developed a routine to deal with it. As a truck approached, I would scan the road surface directly in front of me for hazards, take a deep breath at the last possible moment, then close my eyes and duck my head so that the rocks thrown up by the truck would hit my helmet instead of my face. When the rocks stopped hitting my helmet, I would squint my eyes open a crack to make sure I was still straight on the road, and only when I couldn't hold my breath any longer would I gasp for air, hoping the dust would have thinned somewhat by then.

"Warning: Chains must be put on here unless equipped with winter tread tires in good condition"

It sounds like I had very lucky timing though, because there would have been a lot more trucks if it weren't a holiday weekend (Dominion Day), and I'm past most of the logging now, so maybe no log trucks.

No good place to camp, so I'm just on a bank, barely off the road. Mosquitoes and no-see-ums are bad - worse every day. When I got my tent set up, (11:00 PM) I just dove inside, wild from the bug bites, though I had used repellent. 

July 1, Tuesday: 38 miles (4566)

 "Tougher riding today - hard-packed but very bumpy, a lot of loose stones, many stretches of 'cobblestone' type surface composed of embedded fist-size rocks, and more traffic, including more big trucks.

Slept in a bit, wrote, had granola rather than deal with the bugs while cooking. I packed as much as I could while in the tent, and then in a flurry of motion, I jumped outside, rolled up the tent, packed everything onto the bike with remarkable speed and efficiency, and... realized that the back tire was flat! The bugs were so bad I didn't even consider patching it there - it was all I could do to pump it up and get out of there.

A little way down the road, a passing camper got a flat, so while I was hanging out with them, I installed the spare tube on the rear. Just a few miles later, I got an impact flat on the front tire. That was a pretty discouraging moment; 2 hours and I had gone 6 miles.

During the day, the black flies took over from the mosquitoes, swarming me when I stopped to eat, and even biting me on the uphills when I couldn't out-run them.

 Around 5:00, as I was about to cross the river north of Hodder Lake, some folks camped there called out and asked if I would like some tea or wine. Not really wanting either, but craving good company, I went down and hung out with them, drinking Tang and eating cookies, smashed cake, and ham sandwiches, and talking about our respective trips. They're the Fadums: Maureen, Gunther, and their boys Michael and Kevin, from Vancouver, and they're heading up to canoe the Yukon River and drive the Dempster Highway.

 

 I could have done a lot more miles, but it's more important to spend time with friendly people, so I set up my tent and hung out with them. They fed me a huge dinner, and we talked around the fire until midnight. I can't get used to the daylight up here. It's light from 4:00 A.M until 11:00 P.M. 

Gunther told me about The Dempster Highway, and encouraged me to think about doing it. It goes 450 miles north from near Dawson City, crossing the Arctic Circle, and ending at Inuvik. It was just completed last year, so it would be somewhat pioneering to bike it!

  July 2, Wednesday: 70 miles (4636)

What a good combination of helpful events. First, the rain this morning did keep the dust down, at least for part of the day, and there was no problem with mud. Second, the road was very good much of the time - I flew on a stretch of it that had just been graded this morning - and another section had been treated with calcium chloride, so very little dust there. (Calcium chloride absorbs moisture from the air, keeping the road surface slightly damp.) Third, there was much less traffic, and only 6 or 8 big trucks all day, I think because of the Stewart bridge being out. That could be the best thing that happened for me.

 

 I made it to the campground at Kiniskan Lake. It's beautiful here, and there are lots of friendly folks around. Word of my trip is again preceding me; as I pulled into the campground, I overheard someone saying "He's riding all the way from Connecticut!" That felt good, of course, and people seem even more likely to be friendly if they know ahead of time what a long trip I'm on. One guy gave me two freshly caught and cleaned trout, which I had for dinner. Another gave me a beer and chatted with me while I ate, and another offered to re-supply me with anything that I was short on... I wish I was out of something so I could take him up on it!

 A lot of other people stopped by just to talk. I think it's the camraderie of the shared challenge of the dirt road; it's not easy even in a car, because cars are not immune to dust and flat tires either, and you have to calculate whether you can make it to the next gas station on a full tank, or whether you need to carry extra in jugs. If your car breaks down, Triple A is not around the corner! So everyone looks out for others, and especially for someone as vulnerable as a bicyclist. The Fadums were perhaps the epitome of that, giving me breakfast this morning, which gives me one more meal of cushion if the weather turns bad, or I have some other delay before I can restock my food. Although I think they would have been that nice regardless of the dirt road - they are really really good people.